One of the biggest challenges facing a parent is to help their children take responsibility or ownership of whatever they are involved in. This could include a team, organization, society and especially their family I’m not the greatest teacher when it come a selfless work ethic around the house. According to my brother, who hired my son to help him with his development business, my son didn’t even know how to properly use a shovel or rake. I guess I should have had him dig up the front lawn a couple of times to get the hang of it. Instead I let my brother pay him to learn under his tutelage.
The best way to say it is that our children are spoiled brats – they didn’t learn some of the normal family duties because we just did it for them. We know some parents that require their kids to do their own laundry, this just seems like a way to wreck your clothes so you would have to buy some new ones. Our teenage daughter thinks that if you happen to be starting the car – you might as well go to the mall to get a new outfit. Once in a blue moon the kids do something around the house, usually it’s after being asked a couple thousand times and finally it’s followed up with a threat or ultimatum. Once or twice in the last couple of decades they’ve done something without being asked – I’m sure this is to see if my heart is working properly and may be the number one cause of heart attacks in middle age fathers. The other day such an event took place – our daughter decided to do a little work in the yard. As I have stated this isn’t a common occurrence. Now before I give her too much credit, it was the first sunny day in more that three weeks and the way she was dressed anyone could see that getting a tan was on the top of her priority list. I’m not the greatest gardener in the world, as a matter of fact if it was a contest I would take last in the neighborhood.
When looking for an opportunity to help out the choices are abundant – and the one with the most unobstructed sun was the obvious winner. Lori and I had been up to the church and were gone for this hour of selective weeding. You can imagine our surprise when we rounded the corner and saw her actually working. Despite my own lack of labor in the yard I did notice that she was sitting in one of the only location I thought there wasn’t any weeds in the first place. There was a large pile of vegetation next to her on the lawn – that’s when my excitement became my grim reality. She had just spent the last hour pulling out all of our strawberry plants. She didn’t know that we had any strawberry plant – they hadn’t been there long enough to bear any fruit. This was going to be the year – not anymore. I guess they looked like weeds to her. I couldn’t really get mad at her since she was just trying to help out. I spent the next hour trying to replant strawberry with some sort of tender loving care. So that day we spent more than two hours in the yard and were farther behind than when we started.
The only other thing I said to her is that this is going to make a great story and I can feel a church talk coming on. I think there are a lot of times in life that those with more knowledge or experience look at those of us in the learning process and know that what is happening is going to take far longer to correct that the actions that caused the problem. Maybe I should consider building an atrium next to her bedroom room so that she can get a tan while she cleans her room. At least then nothing would die.
